Online Chess

Most of the people I play always take their time, and I end up starting to start more games, no matter how much I try to stop myself. I took a sample of several top online chess players and see that they, on average, have around 15 games going, when I have 30. At one point it had become 200, but gradually lowered to around 25. Not like live chess, where you are resricted on time and can't log off for 1 hour then log in. I was thinking of specifying in my seek someone who is a fast mover. My addiction to starting chess games has become too strong. Can anyone give me a solution?

As you may have guessed, the best solution is probably to slow down.  By committing more time on each move, you'll be forced to play fewer games due to time constraints.  Of course the main problem here is that you won't have to spend too much time in the opening that you're familiar with.  I think the problem you might be having is that you go quickly in the opening and start a lot of games, but when you need to slow down during the middle game, you can't due to the number of ongoing games and you get overwhelmed.

However, I don't think 30 is necessarily too much.  What's the average time control for each of them?

Stick with live in that case. Online Chess is not really well-suited to making multiple moves on the same game each day.

There should be a tab for that on your seek that you can adjust, where you can allow only players of a certain speed to accept the seek.

I apologize for a wrong reply - see #7. 

Maybe I got it mixed up with something. But I'm pretty sure it was once possible. But as the format has changed recently this may not be true anymore.

The option is already there in Online chess to select fast movers ...

Oh wow, the way it's set up, I'd never guess it was there! I would only try clicking on "show more options" at the bottom.

It's a very stealthy option: invisible unless you select RANDOM opponent.

Thank you artfizz!

It used to be much easier to find, but recently changed...took me ages to find it again.

hmm... Perhaps the toggle there between seeing the options and seeing blank space (the default) needs to be reconsidered. :)

The average is 3 days. I've tried to have seeks for faster players, but they seem really slow. My average of moving is 7 hrs, mostly because school homework made me lose some "No Vacation" games.

And 1 day games is a good idea.

Can someone suggest what is a decent number of games (for the average person)?

Most of my opponents have no more than 15. But one has 276 games going, even though he is a basic member.

I have had the experience of playing around 40 games before. I like to take deep thinks in my games, so trying to hold my integrity in all of them ended up becoming an absolute chore. Maybe faster players don't mind that. Games are easy to start, because the first few moves are usually a breeze, but once you get into them you may want to start devoting a lot of time to even just one game, and at that point you're regretting starting so many games.

So I try to be conservative -- even if I think I could handle a couple more games than what I am playing, I still don't start them. It creates a little safety net for me, ensuring that in case I get busy, or suddenly lose interest in playing, I won't be overwhelmed. What you can handle is something for you to learn, but I play less than 10 games, which is certainly much more interesting than just one, but I know it can't overwhelm me. Sure, I could (and have) play more than 10. But I take into account the fact that while one day I might feel like playing a lot, and might enjoy 20 games at once, other times I might want to relax, and that's something you can't do so much when you've committed to playing a lot of them.